On
November 28, 1998, a chance discovery uncovered the 24,500-year-old skeleton of
a child at Abrigo do Lagar Velho, Portugal. The four-year-old had been buried
with a pierced shell and was covered with red ochre. The ochre was confined to
the region of the body, suggesting that the body had been wrapped prior to
burial.1 When the child was examined several odd
features were discovered. The child had a mixture of Neanderthal and
anatomically modern human traits. Eric Trinkaus, an authority on Neanderthals,
was called to examine the child. According to the report, the childís skull,
mandible, and pubic proportions are those of a modern human. The ratio of femur
length/tibia length and certain muscle attachments clearly display Neanderthal
characteristics. The authors of the report confidently state that this child is
a Neanderthal/modern human hybrid.

In an accompanying commentary,
Tattersall and Schwartz claim that this is not evidence of hybridization and
that the child is merely a stocky anatomically modern human. However, there are
several genetic problems with such a concept. First, Neanderthals lived in
glaciated Europe and adapted to the extreme cold by evolving short legs in which
the crural index (ratio of tibia length divided by the femur length) was lower
than most Neanderthals. Neanderthals had crural indices averaging around 0.79.
Anatomically modern humans were hypothesized to have come out of Africa and
invaded Europe and thus, were the Cro-Magnon peoples. They brought with them
their heat-adapted body shapes that had crural indices much higher than those of
the Neanderthals. Anatomically modern Europeans, even those from 3020,000 years
ago, have an average crural index of .84.2The
Abrigo do Lagar Velho child had a crural index of 0.78. Since no anatomically
modern European human remains from 33,000 to 22,000 years have crural indices
lower than 0.82, one must wonder where the child got the genetics for such
Neanderthal-proportioned legs if, as Tattersall and Schwartz suggest, he was
just a stocky modern human.3There
are no known examples.

Secondly, in e-mail conversation with
Trinkaus, he mentioned that the pectoralis major muscle insertion is diagnostic
of Neanderthal ancestry, even in the juvenile state.4The Abrigo do Lagar Velho child has the Neanderthal-style pectoralis major
muscle insertion yet none of the anatomically modern humans have that
morphology. Once again, if this child is not a hybrid, the question must be
raised as to where the child obtained the genes for this trait since modern
humans did not possess it. The simplest explanation is that it is a hybrid.

Since the initial report and
commentary, Trinkaus and Zilhao have bitterly attacked Tattersall and Schwartz
charging them with misrepresentation of the views of others and numerous
anatomical errors.5This is not the
first time in the anthropological literature that such errors have been charged
against Tattersall and Schwartz.6

The implications for Christian
apologetics are clear. If this child is a hybrid, it means that humans were
capable of interbreeding with Neanderthals and thus Neanderthals were us. This
implies that they too were spiritual beings, as a possible Neanderthal religious
altar suggests.7And if they were
spiritual beings, it means that commonly accepted apologetical schemes need
drastic revision.